OBITUARIES

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 1999:

Margaret Wentworth Owings,
85, died on January 21 at Wild Bird, her
clifftop home in Big Sur, California, soon
after publication of her collected writings and
art, Voice From The Sea: Reflections on
Wildlife and Wilderness. Remembered by
Mack Lundstrom of the San Jose Mercury-
News as “the most influential woman in the
California environmental movement,”
Owings was “a protector of wildlife from the
day in 1957 when she watched with her
binoculars as a rifleman killed a Stellar sea
lion near her home. For the next 40 years,”
Lundstrom wrote, “she pushed for laws to
stop a proposal to slaughter 75% of the
California seal lion population.” Pushed by
the fishing industry, the proposal survives in
altered form as the National Marine Fisheries
Service recommendation of February 1999
that the Marine Mammal Protection Act
should be amended to allow the killing of sea
lions and seals who interfere with fishing,
invade marinas, or threaten salmon runs.
Owings cofounded the Rachel Carson
Council in 1965, founded Friends of the Sea
Otter in 1968, was founding president of the
Mountain Lion Foundation, and also held
board posts with the Save-the-Redwoods
League, the Big Sur Land Trust, Defenders
of Wildlife, the African Wildlife Foundation,
the Point Lobos League, and the Environmental
Defense Fund. Without Owings,
said Big Sur Land Trust executive director
Zad Leavy, “the California sea otter might
well be extinct.”

Werner P. Heuschele, 69, longtime
head of the Center for the Reproduction
of Endangered Species at the San Diego Zoo,
died on February 1. Also widely known as a
frequent guest on the Dr. Dog’s Animal Talk
radio program, hosted by Dennis Fetko,
DVM, the German-born Heuschele worked
his way through California State University
at San Diego as a summer bus driver for the
zoo, then joined the zoo veterinary staff after
earning his DVM at U.C. Davis in 1957.
Heuschele worked for the USDA and taught
at various universities, 1962-1980, before
becoming director of CRES in 1981.

Adam Wilding, 12, of Chesaning
Township, Michigan, known to friends for
his love of dogs, drowned on February 6
along with a dog he was trying to save from
thin ice on the Shiawassee River.

Kenneth Kitson, 73, died on
February 13 from pulmonary fibrosis.
Kitson, a 40-year employee of the printing
firm Frye & Smith, joined 29 other investors
in 1982 to form Wildlife Education Ltd.,
publisher of the popular Zoobooks series for
children, which now distributes about
400,000 publications per month. Also active
in Republican politics, Kitson was an early
booster of former U.S. Senator and California
governor Pete Wilson.

Kenneth C. Brugger, 80, died at
home on November 25, 1998, in Austin,
Texas. Brugger worked at his father’s garage
in Kenosha, Wisconsin, until World War II,
when he developed a lifelong interest in carrier
pigeons while serving in the U.S. A r m y
Signal Corps. Brugger relocated to Mexico
City in 1965, where he worked as a textile
consultant. In 1973 he saw a newspaper ad
seeking volunteers to help tag and track
monarch butterflies, placed by University of
Toronto researcher Fred Urquart, who had
tried since 1940 to find the southern end of
the monarchs’ migration. More than 3,000
people had helped in the unsuccessful effort.
Brugger joined them, wondering if a cloud of
butterflies he had once driven through in the
volcanic mountains west of Mexico City
might provide a clue. Following up, Brugger
and his wife Catalina discovered the monarchs’
wintering ground on January 2, 1975.
as many as four million monarchs per acre
covered the surrounding fir trees, 10,000 feet
up a steep slope. Ironically, Brugger saw
nothing of their bright color: he was totally
colorblind.

Marie Argo of Animal Care, in
Ashburton, British Columbia, died on
December 11, 1998. Wrote Shirley Lamb,
of Victoria, B.C., “She will be sadly missed
by all animal-caring people.”